Hi Tim,

I particularly like Marco's reasoning too, mind you I really dislike 'Strictly' but love this album, I don't dance, but wish I could and often say I will learn when I have more time, as I think music and dance go hand in glove.

The Billie Jean video is an historic bit of pop culture and I never tire of seeing that...
+1, although I would add the word 'appropriate' before "music" (above), as not all music is the kind you would dance to!

The fact is (and it's simply a natural phenomenon) some people have little or no sense of rhythm, and *that* fundamentally influences their music choices, and in some ways, the sound that they also enjoy from a hi-fi system. This tends to lead those people into preferring music of the 'cerebral' variety: 'thinking man's music', if you will, devoid of a dance beat, and also curiously, as I've found, any boy/girl 'love interest'.

Generally, I find that people who might consider themselves as 'intellectuals', or the more 'reserved' sorts, shy away from the latter (or 'letting their hair down' in general), as they tend to subdue their emotions (in that respect, I'm the opposite, and am very demonstrative of mine), and anything that may be considered as dance music, although, as ever, there are exceptions.

For most of my life, I was of the opposite mentality (loving funky, beat-driven music one could dance to), and so the vast majority of my musical choices centered around anything with a 'boogie factor' (or what I would call 'pop ballads', say the likes of 'True' by Spandau Ballet, where the boy/girl thing featured prominently), particularly as I rarely listen to what one would consider as 'meaningful' lyrics (political shite and stuff like that), and so when many of you here, as teenagers, were into the classic rock of the 60s and 70s, I was into the soul, disco and pop scene. The Top 40 chart show, broadcast every Sunday night on Radio 1, was one of my musical highlights of the week! However, I also loved listening to John Peel, late at night, on my bedside clock radio... It was a curious mix!

Then when the electronic 'new wave' keyboard-driven music came in, during the 80s, I became hooked on that, as indeed most of my mates were. The music of Michael Jackson, and indeed rather embarrassingly now, that of Wham! and George Michael, also featured heavily then in my listening, mainly because I thought they were 'cool' Oh, and some nice looking girls at school also tended to like them There was a period, though, where I also liked Queen, Genesis, UFO, Rush, Pink Floyd, Gong, Wishbone Ash, etc, mainly when I got a motorbike and started hanging around with different people. Ultimately, though, I'm really an 80s music boy at heart!

It's only been in the last 15 years, or so, that my musical tastes have matured and diversified, massively, and now I'm into all sorts of weird and wonderful stuff, some of it very obscure. I'm also listening to classical music regularly now, whereas I'd never have entertained it before, as that (and the likes of classic rock) would've been considered as boring 'old man's' music! I was rather a trendy big bastard in my day, so was really only interested in what was 'current'...

However, just like with hi-fi, one's appreciation of music is on a continual learning curve, and I'm glad that my rather large collection of music now is packed full of widely differing genres from various eras - I simply wouldn't have it any other way... Apologies for going off on a tangent!

Marco.